The dangers of electronic communications, such as email, text messages and the internet, and the need to protect children from bad influences, such as cyber stalkers and online predators, have been well publicized and continue to be a problem. Many families wish to prevent their children from accessing messages that contain sexually explicit, drug, alcohol, gang, violence or other objectionable content. Many parents or guardians are concerned about online safety. Software packages for managing access to, and monitoring and filtering the content of, web sites, emails, and instant message conversations have helped somewhat, but these measures have not been fully effective.
Because of their inherent mobility and anonymity, cellular phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's), Blackberries and other such devices that provide text messaging service are perceived by law enforcement authorities as especially problematic for parents when trying to protect their children from cyber stalkers and other undesirable influences. The alert feature for text messages disclosed in this specification addresses these and other problems.